Enemy of the Year: Why Russia?

I once had an online conversation with a journalist whose name you would instantly
recognize that started with a question for me: “Why Russia?” Why, this person
wanted to know, are we witnessing a hate campaign aimed at Moscow, decades after
the implosion of international communism and the breakup of the USSR?

I tried to give him a coherent and comprehensive answer, but Twitter is not
conducive to in-depth discussions of that sort, and so I filed it away as a
question to be answered at a later date. And certainly now is the time
to answer it: the Democratic party and its media minions are demanding an “investigation”
(i.e. a fishing expedition) into the burning question of whether the President
of the United States is the Manchurian Candidate: “Putin’s
puppet,” as Hillary Clinton infamously averred. Our out-of-control intelligence
agencies are furiously
pushing the same line.

This echo of the 2016 presidential campaign is surely one major reason why
the anti-Russsian hysteria has reached such a fever pitch. As Glenn Greenwald
writes in a
recent piece in The Intercept:

“[I]t’s used to avoid confronting the fact
that Trump is a by-product of the extraordinary and systemic failure of the Democratic Party. As long as the Russia story
enables pervasive avoidance of self-critique – one of the things humans least
like to do – it will continue to resonate no matter its actual substance and
value.”

Well, yes, but the fact is that Mrs. Clinton likened Russian President Vladimir
Putin to
Hitler well before the 2016 election, and the same Democratic party foreign
policy mandarins – Strobe Talbott comes to mind – were busy whipping up Russophobic
sentiment in the years preceding Trump’s victory at the polls. Greenwald points
out that President Obama’s policy toward Russia wasn’t at all Clintonian, but
this is only true if one fails to look beneath the surface. The roots of the
current hysteria were laid during his reign: after all, the US-German-EU effort
to overthrow the democratically elected President of Ukraine, and the installation
of a “pro-Western” regime, occurred while Obama was in the White House. The
Magnitsky Act, targeting top Russian officials, was passed by Congress and
signed by President Obama in 2012.

And so while the present quite extraordinary campaign to portray Russia as
our Major Adversary has been given considerable impetus by the Democratic party
elites, eager to explain away their humiliating defeat – and discredit the current
occupant of the White House – there’s much more to it than that. We can break
it down into four major reasons:

1) Inter-service rivalry in the military – In May
of last year, I wrote about the war breaking out between the various components
of the US military, a battle over budgets:

“In early April, a battalion of senior military officials appeared before
a Senate panel and testified
that the US Army is ‘outranged and outgunned,’ particularly in any
future conflict with Russia. Arguing for a much bigger budget for the Army,
they claimed that, absent a substantial increase in funding, the Russians would
overtake us and, even scarier, ‘the army of the future will be too small to
secure the nation.’

“The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming! And before you know it,
Brooklyn will be renamed Putingrad.

“Of course it was pure coincidence that, shortly after these alarm bells
were rung, a piece
appeared in Politico magazine purportedly showing that the Russians were
breathing down our necks: it revealed a ‘secret study’ – revealed for the first
time! – that supposedly detailed Russia’s deadly new capabilities as demonstrated
in Ukraine. Included in this potpourri of propaganda was the assertion by none
other than Gen. Wesley Clark, former presidential candidate and well-known Russophobe,
that Moscow had developed a tank that is for all intents and purposes ‘invulnerable.’”

The national debt is now at $20 trillion – a sum that the human mind can barely
conceive. The reality is that we cannot afford the kind of money the military
is now demanding. Indeed, the defense budget hike being advanced by the Trump
administration is dead
on arrival, and even if it were passed by Congress – an unlikely outcome
– it would hardly satisfy the projected expansion of military spending envisioned
by the generals. And so we are now witnessing a ramped up campaign to portray
the Russians as ten feet tall. As a
follow up piece in Politico by Mark Perry put it:

“’This is the ‘Chicken-Little, sky-is-falling’
set in the Army,’ the senior Pentagon officer said. ‘These guys want us to believe
the Russians are 10 feet tall. There’s a simpler explanation: The Army is looking
for a purpose, and a bigger chunk of the budget. And the best way to get that
is to paint the Russians as being able to land in our rear and on both of our
flanks at the same time. What a crock.’”

A war with Russia would require land forces in huge numbers, more tanks, more
artillery, and much more money for the Army. If the Russian Threat is what they
say it is, then the Army will devour a glutton’s share of the military budget,
leaving the Navy and the Air Force to starve. It would also require complementary
upgrades for the militaries of all the NATO nations – a gold mine for the US
weapons industry.

So one answer to the “Why Russia?” question is simple: follow the money.

And speaking of following the money, another big factor energizing the anti-Russian
campaign is:

2) The Russian diaspora – When Putin came to power one of the first
things he did was go after the infamous oligarchs who had backed – and manipulated
– his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin. Under the drunken Yeltsin, these “entrepreneurs”
had used the State apparatus to “privatize” (i.e. loot) what had previously
been the State-owned economy, gobbling up entire sectors at unbelievably cheap
prices. Putin moved to disassemble what was a competing power center, and the
result was the flight of
the oligarchs to the West. Having put their ill-gotten gains in Western
banks and holding companies, they shacked up in
London, New York, Switzerland, and the French Riviera, where they plotted
Putin’s overthrow and their triumphant return.

There’s an awful lot of money sloshing around in these circles, and a good
part of it is being used to buy
up media properties that act as outlets for anti-Russian propaganda. Newspapers,
think
tanks, and various other vehicles for the molding of public opinion are
financed by this Russian Diaspora, which acts as an intellectual Praetorian
Guard for the politicians hoping to ride the wave of anti-Russia sentiment.
They act as a lobby on behalf of the arms industry, and the political forces
that stand to gain from the anti-Russian campaign – but they are not alone.

3) The Israel and Saudi lobbies – The network of organizations that
form one of the most powerful lobbies in this country, and throughout Europe,
has been a major albeit largely undercover factor in the growth and development
of the anti-Russian propaganda blitz.

Back in 2013, when President Obama was seeking congressional authorization
for military action in Syria, AIPAC deployed hundreds of lobbyists to
Capitol Hill to convince the assembled solons to support him. And it was AIPAC
and allied groups that successfully pressured Congress to impose Syrian sanctions.

When the Russians moved into Syria in support of Bashar al-Assad’s government,
they came into conflict with the stated objectives of Israelis, who have long
sought the overthrow of the Syrian regime. Indeed, Israeli officials have openly
stated that they prefer
ISIS to Assad – all the better to undercut their principal adversaries in
the region, Iran and Hezbollah, both of which are fighting ISIS in Syria on
Assad’s behalf.

Acting in concert with AIPAC and other pro-Israel organizations, the very well-funded
Saudi lobby has been another factor driving the anti-Russian campaign. The Saudis,
in collaboration with the Gulf sheikhdoms, have been funding the “moderate”
Islamists who have been fighting to overthrow Assad, and with the Russian intervention
they have an interest in pushing for a new cold war. Russia’s ties to Iran make
Moscow, by extension, an enemy of the Kingdom, and, in Washington, D.C., the
Saudi lobby is quietly fighting that battle in the corridors of power.

4) Ideology – No, the crazed rhetoric coming from “mainstream” Democratic
figures like Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff isn’t just an opportunistic way of
explaining the failure of Hillary Clinton to win the White House – there’s much
more to it than that. Perhaps the most powerful factor driving the anti-Russian
polemics we’re hearing from our liberal Democratic politicians and pundits –
the kind we haven’t heard in this country since the heyday of McCarthyism –
is ideology.

Russia has become an international locus of populist conservatism and nationalism.
Against the globalism of the Davos crowd, Putin has enunciated the revival of
national sovereignty as the organizing principle of his preferred international
order. Against the cultural cosmopolitanism of the Western elites, Russia has
championed traditional values. This is a red flag for American liberals, whose
war on behalf of political correctness ignores such outdated forms as national
boundaries.

Far more serious, however, is Putin’s opposition to the idea of a “liberal
international order”: the Russian leader, who clearly doesn’t know his proper
place in the world, has stubbornly upheld the validity of a multi-polar world
where Washington’s will is far from supreme.

The ideological divide between East and West really started in the run up to
the Iraq war, when neoconservatives went ballistic as
Putin cleaned out the
oligarchs and derided
US war propaganda. He has since articulated a consistently disdainful critique
of the idea that has shaped US foreign policy since the end of the cold war:
the concept of America as a “hyperpower,” dominant all over the globe.

Putin is an unrepentant nationalist, and nationalism in any form – whether
Russian, American, French, British, or whatever – is the enemy not only of our
liberal globalists, but also of the neoconservatives. This antipathy is what
united them during the 2016 election, and it is what brings them together in
the Anti-Russian Popular Front. That they are both focused on a campaign to
discredit – and impeach – President Trump on the grounds that he’s “Putin’s
puppet” marries their twin obsessions in a perfect storm of vitriol.

You don’t have to approve of either Putin or Trump to see the danger in this.
As the American political scene undergoes a seismic realignment, the War Party
is taking advantage of this plastic moment to augment and strengthen its forces.
With Putin as the new Saddam Hussein, and Russia as the new Iraq, our tireless
warmongers are at it again. In a modern reenactment of the Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact, the liberal-neocon alliance is desperately maneuvering for a confrontation
with Russia – they’ve even brought George W. Bush out
of mothballs!

Whether they can revive the dead carcass of the Bush wing of the GOP remains
to be seen: I’ll believe it when I see it. However that may be, I have to sit
back and just enjoy this moment, because the sight of
our “liberals” hailing Dubya as the voice of Republican sanity goes to show
what we knew all along – that these people have no shame.

An Important Note: Yes, we’re living in craaazy times. George
W. Bush is the hero of “liberals.” The Democratic party is sounding like the
John Birch Society, circa 1963. A reality television star is the President of
these United States. It’s a brand new world – but some things never change.
And one of those eternal truths is that the War Party is active, and relentless,
ginning up wars on every continent.

Another
thing that hasn’t changed: Antiwar.com is still here, still fighting the War
Party tooth and nail. For over twenty years we’ve been at our post, debunking
the war propaganda that fills our airwaves and the columns of our newspapers
24/7. But we aren’t necessarily eternal: our continued existence depends on
you, our readers and supporters.

That’s why our current fundraising campaign is so important. The country is
at a crossroads: anything can happen. And that includes another major war –
with Russia, with Iran, with whatever enemy of the moment is in the War Party’s
sights.

We really need to get this fundraising up to speed, and we need to do it fast
– so we can get back doing our job, which is debunking the lies of the War Party
and mobilizing the American people around a rational foreign policy.

But we can’t do it without your support.

We’ve raised $31,000 in matching funds, but there’s a catch – we don’t get
it until and unless we raise that amount in smaller donations. In these “interesting”
times, the need for Antiwar.com has never been greater. Now is the time to dig
into your pocket and make that tax-deductible
donation today.

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets
are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist
of me thinking out loud.

Author: Justin Raimondo

Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative, and writes a monthly column for Chronicles. He is the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement [Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993; Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2000], and An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard [Prometheus Books, 2000].
View all posts by Justin Raimondo